Nik,
Life Forms was used for Pre-viz work on the films Jurassic Park and
Terminator II. You can bring in different polygons shaps so building sets
isn't a problem. I imported a model that I made with Extreme 3D. I was
even successful in animating it.
Lar Lubovich's approach does make sense. I find working with multiple
figures in Life Forms is relatively easy and a great way to visualize
complex movement patterns in space to different rhythms.
If your intersted in incorporating dance in virtual 3D environments you
might want to check out the Biovision group. I believe they are set up in
California possibly the City of Angels but it could be San Francisco.
When I plugged in some of the mocap examples into Life Forms it was as
real as animated movement could look. As good as the 3DStudioMax
dancing baby demo. In mocap every frame is a key frame but it is
interesting to try and combine some keyframe animation with mocap and see
how the data can be manipulated.
And I know it has been a long time since you asked us to introduce
ourselves but I am a recent graduate from UofMichigan and right now I am
dancing for Dance Gallery/Peter Sparling and Company, working on dance
technolgy works and consulting the dance department at UofM on Life Forms
and other dance technologies.
This group might be interested in a group I belong to tentatively called
'Computational Aesthetics.' It consists of professors and grad students
from the Artificial Intelligence Lab, School of Music, Department of
Movement Science and the Dance Department. One of the questions being
asked in this group is weither it is possible to mathematically define
aesthetics. Anyway there is a web page I will send along in a following
email.

more soon,

jason.

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The shoji's paper flap is frayed and thin,
Through which the poet's cat slipped out and in.
-Ho-o
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On Mon, 7 Jul 1997, nik wrote:

> > robert:> > >the ability to work independently with time factors, physical shapes and> >movents in space, is extremely useful.> > i read in the ny times magazine a while back that Lar Lubovich is doing a> ballet to Othello and was sneaking in with a handful of dancers at night> 'cuz it cost about a zillion dollars a week to reherse the whole company> ... is this the kind of thing life forms is useful for?> > also how important is the lighting and rehersal space to your choreography> - does lifeforms allow u to model the performance space as well ... i know> a lot of film types here in the city of angels use 3D packages to model> their sets before building them ... but this doesn't seem to happen at all> in dance ... or does it ... once one model is built for a theatre it could> be used over and over by set designers and since lifeforms exports 3D> studio compatible files ... ? maybe ? .... mix a lifeforms animation as a> 3D studio object into a model of the set design ... is this happening? ...> any thoughts why or why not?> > > thanx. btw any repository for lifeforms animations out there .... there> are zillions of websites for mesh for other packages ... seems a good way> to see what people have done?> > > saludos,> > > nik> > > > ~ the dnc project - dance, networks, computing> > http://www.websciences.org/dnc/> > > What did Mike Tyson say to Van Gogh?> > "You gunna eat that?"> > > \|/ ____ \|/> @~/ Oo \~@> /_( \__/ )_\> \__U_/> > >